Darkest
by LoverFaery
Summary: There is a hint of bad magic in the air. It falls on Remus, and Sirius is the only one who can get through to him. Maraders era. R/S, especially in the second chapter. Rated for language and death.
1. Wrong

Part one of two.

For the only person I'd want to touch me after a tragedy.

Disclaimer: The existence of certain plotlines proves that I did not write Harry Potter.

* * *

Magic, as taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was a logical force. Certainly the students came to it with varying degrees of aptitude or ability, but on a basic, rational level, it proscribed to a certain set of rules. There was a stimulus and a response, an action and a reaction, an event and its consequence. One performed certain steps and, to a certain degree, a predictable outcome followed.

But there was an older magic than the practiced structure of Hogwarts students. A more capricious and elemental force. It was magic of the sort that small magical children activated without harnessing, without knowing how. It was magic that came on the wind and governed the spontaneity of the world, the bounds of luck and love.

For all his dedication to order and reason, Remus Lupin had a very good understanding of this earth-magic. Better than most, for this was the magic that tugged on his bones with every waxing moon until it coaxed the wolf forth in a violent burst of moonlight. Even the families with the oldest of magic in their blood did not have the sense for this he did. It might, in another life, have been convenient.

In the life he was leading, however, it was rather unpleasant. He knew, in some way he could not have explained, that something of great magnitude was about to happen. His skin crawled with it. Full moon was nearly a week away, and he should not have been feeling so out of sorts yet. Still he started every time someone opened a door and kept twitchily looking over his shoulder all day.

"Merlin, Moony, what's the matter?" James asked, when an owl swooping into the common room to deliver a message to some second-year girl caused Remus to jump so he spilled tea all over his Potions book. "You've been off all afternoon."

"All day, even," Peter chimed in. "Didn't eat a bite at breakfast, kept watching the owls like he was waiting for post."

Remus looked up from blotting tea out of his good jumper and sighed. "Just not feeling well, I suppose. It's probably nothing." He shrugged and tried to appear nonchalant despite the squirming of his insides and the yawn forcing its way from his mouth.

Sirius raised one eyebrow to a phenomenal height. "Tired, Moony?"

"Er, yes?" He said. "Didn't sleep too well. Strange dreams. Probably not helping."

"Maybe you could get a wink before dinner," James suggested. "Might make you feel a bit more relaxed."

Remus glanced out the window at the bright sun shining with relentless cheerfulness. He wavered. "I don't know, I've got loads of work…"

"Go on up, Moony," Sirius urged. "I'll get you in an hour or so. You're in no state to work as it is."

Peter nodded.

And so Remus gathered his books and went up to the dormitory. Where he found a raven sitting on his bed.

He froze. The raven looked at him with its beady black bird eyes. "Well, shoo," Remus said finally and the bird flew out the open window. Remus stepped forward and sat on is bed, head in his hands against his building headache.

Only then did he notice the message the raven had left behind.

When Sirius came to wake him from his nap, he found Remus hurriedly packing his trunk and muttering to himself.

"Dress robes'll need to be pressed—bugger—" He bent to pick up an escaped pair of socks, and encountered Sirius's helpful hand, which had already rescued the truant socks.

"Where are you going?" He asked, brow creased.

"Erm, home," Remus said, flushing. "My mother wrote. There's been… My father. Has died."

Sirius had never felt for his family the way other people did for theirs. But while he did not understand the tenderness with which his mates sometimes spoke of home, he knew that this was a terrible thing for a family like Moony's. He felt himself turn a warm, shamed color. "Fuck, Moony, I… fuck. I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?"

Remus ran his fingers through his hair. "Just… I need to get my things together. I need to get home. Mum's left it to me to set up how… I'll need to open a Floo transport… I've got to make the funeral arrangements, Mum's hopeless, and my homework, shit, what'll I do about that?"

"Don't worry about that," Sirius said. "You just think about your Mum right now, James and I'll tell the professors… something." He wanted to hug Remus but he didn't know how. Remus kept moving, anyway, so half the trouble would have been catching him. He looked so blurry he might disintegrate if touched. "You just… do what needs to be done, we'll take care of the rest."

Remus nodded, absentmindedly chewing one fingernail. "I've sent word to Dumbledore. All that's left is…" And he lapsed back into his private world, throwing essentials into his trunk and bustling about the room with the matter-of-fact busy manner unique to those who are ignoring bereavement.

A few hours later, after a hurried goodbye to James and Peter, Remus was gone.

Sirius suspected he and the other Marauders had been forgotten entirely in the stress and aftermath, until he received a short note on a torn piece of paper:

_The funeral is Saturday at three. Please come. –M._


	2. Right

Part two and final.

I had a lot of trouble getting this to go where I wanted it to end up. Actually the scene went totally differently than it was supposed to when I started to write it. But I like the way it turned out, and I hope you do too.

Mine? Still no.

* * *

Sirius itched. He always itched in dress robes. He squirmed in his seat, struggling to get comfortable, struggling to scratch the spot between his shoulder blades without elbowing James or the stern-looking lady on his other side. The lady gave an impetuous sniff into her lace handkerchief when he bumped her.

"Shh," James hissed. "Sit still, you're making a scene."

Sirius scowled, burrowing mutinously deeper into his seat. The old James would never have used the phrase "making a scene." The old James loved to be "making a scene." But grown-up, serious, Head Boy, _Lily's _James sat still and straight, staring solemnly ahead. It would have made Sirius sick if Moony hadn't already.

Remus sat next to his mother at the front, all stiff and untouchable except for his hands. Sirius could see his fingers tugging and twining with one another, turning over and over in a twisting dance of awkwardness in Remus's lap. Despite his unwavering gaze toward the stream of his father's friends making eulogies, those fingers betrayed his lack of focus.

Watching those fingers pull at one another, Sirius wasn't focused on the service either. It ended unexpectedly with James's elbow in his ribs.

"Get up," Pete said. "It's over. Time to go to Moony's."

The Lupin house was small and dingy-looking. The cleaning and preparation for company only emphasized the age and wear: stains in the carpet, scratches on the table. It formed a bleak contrast with the cozy home of the Potters and the polished mansion of Sirius's former family. It was as though the building, not just the family inhabiting it, was bereft.

Remus looked worn, too. Gone was the comforting propriety of the service; he was limp and helpless, drowning in a sea of condolences. Sirius remembered the full moon coming tonight—Remus should have been resting, not becoming steadily more drained as he greeted strange old people and accepted their handshakes, casseroles, and words of dubious comfort. Sirius felt tired just looking at him.

So instead he tried not to look at him. He focused on the photographs on the shelf. Younger, happier versions of Remus waved and smiled up at him from his mother's lap, his father's shoulders. It was odd to note how Moony had changed just through the pictures. In each one, he was more drawn, more serious, with more scars and a thinner smile. Increasingly the photo-Remus shrugged around with a book tucked under his arm. One had opened his and was attempting to read it while, next to him, James and Lily battled over something hidden from the frame.

Sirius smiled. That was his Moony, always sticking his head into some book or other. To the left of that photo was one of the Marauders drinking cocoa their first Christmas at Hogwarts all together—third year, he thought it was. But his favorite picture on the shelf was hidden a little behind that one. It was of the two of them, one afternoon last term. It had been taken right after a full moon, and it had been Sirius's turn to take notes for the classes Moony missed. They sat close as Sirius helped Remus decipher his untidy scrawl, and Remus rested his head on Sirius's shoulder as Sirius slipped a supportive arm around his back.

Sirius remembered the smell of an exhausted Remus so close, and a wave of heartbreak broke over his body. Suddenly every fiber of his being wished that a simple hug could fix everything now, as it had seemed to then. But this was an irrational and inexplicable desire. If touch could dissipate life's sorrows, the awkward embraces of Remus's family would have cured his troubles by now. Instead he looked ill at ease with all the touching; it seemed to be doing the aunts more good than Remus, who flinched, barely perceptibly, every time someone touched him.

Besides, he couldn't just go up to Remus and wrap his arms around him… for one thing, if he did, Remus would probably stiffen all over like Sirius was scalding him with his very touch. It would be inappropriate. It violated the most basic rules of polite company which had been beaten into Sirius at a very young age and into which Remus had trained himself. And even if there weren't other people…

It's not that they were awkward with one another. They weren't. But that lack of awkwardness was the result of a series of very carefully constructed, if unspoken, rules. All the same, Sirius wasn't sure he could control himself when Remus was such a mess inside his skin, not if they were alone. So, really, it was a good thing there were all those relatives in the way.

He pulled his attention back to the shelf of things that didn't matter. Anything to avoid seeing the expression on Remus's face as he listened to some cousins saying they had always liked Uncle John the best, which mattered rather too much for comfort.

Even after things had calmed down some, and James had gone with Lily on his arm and Peter trailing after him to talk to Moony, Sirius couldn't bring himself to do it.

It was just so unfair. So fucking unfair. They were seventeen. They should not be losing people, or knowing people who were losing people. Not any way, and definitely not in some stupid war. Remus was barely seventeen. He shouldn't be holding up his broken family. He shouldn't have to take care of them. Someone should be taking care of him.

And no one was. Some people were trying, but they didn't know how to help him. Maybe it was self-centered of him, but Sirius felt like he knew better than they did. At least he knew Moony, which was more than he could say for the second cousins and their weeping mothers. Where had they been days Remus couldn't afford lunch, or the nights the transformations were so bad he spent three days in bed after?

But now they thought there was something they could do. It was another injustice, bitter and stinging in Sirius's eyes.

"You should talk to Moony, mate," James whispered close to his ear. "He kept looking over here. I think he's hurt you haven't been over yet."

"How is he?" Sirius asked, turning to face James.

James's hazel eyes flicked over to where Remus was standing. "Not well, Pads. He won't say anything about it, but I don't think he's all right. Maybe you can get him to talk about it."

By the time Sirius had worked up his courage to go talk to Moony—feeling all the while like maybe he'd make it worse, which was utterly bonkers, since what was he here for if not to comfort Moony? They were mates after all—it was late, and the sun had set. Remus had disappeared from the room where the adults were making polite (if tearful) conversation. But Sirius knew exactly where to find him. He always did, if Moony had gone, know just where to look.

Remus had gone into his bedroom and was sitting on the little bed (half the size of the beds at school) with his head in his hands. He wasn't crying. He wasn't shaking. He was perfectly still, but his stance still conveyed complete defeat.

Sirius crept in, feeling guilty and weirdly self-conscious. He did not understand this feeling. He always knew exactly what he was doing, even when he made mistakes. Things were different now. Here. With Moony.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. "Hey."

Remus didn't look up. He didn't have to. "You don't have to say anything. Please."

So Sirius said nothing. He just did.

And for the first time in days, something felt right.


End file.
